San Jose-based Quantum Corp. is closing its 270-person Costa Mesa plant and moving jobs to Colorado, though most local workers are set to shift to the company’s Irvine operation.
About 70 manufacturing jobs from Costa Mesa are set to go to Quantum’s Colorado Springs, Colo., campus, according to the maker of backup tape systems for computer networks.
No one is set to transfer from here to Colorado, spokesman Brad Cohen said. Layoffs are expected in April, he said. Quantum plans to offer severance and help finding new jobs.
The remaining 200 workers in Costa Mesa are set to move to Quantum’s Irvine Research Park operations, which currently house engineering, service, sales and other operations.
Workers should start moving in April.
The moves consolidate acquisitions by Quantum.
“We’re trying to get the best return on our investment,” Cohen said. “Rather than have sites all over the place, we’re doing some consolidation.”
Quantum acquired the Costa Mesa plant in 2005 when it bought Certance LLC, a former unit of Scotts Valley-based Seagate Technology. The Costa Mesa plant makes some automated tape systems and disk-based storage devices.
The plant has quite a history in the world of data storage.
Seagate acquired it in its buy of San Jose’s Conner Peripherals Inc. in 1996. Conner came to own the plant after its 1993 buy of Costa Mesa’s Archive Corp.
In 2003, Seagate split off the tape drive operation as Certance in a deal led by private equity investors Silver Lake Partners and Texas Pacific Group, which also took Seagate private 2000.
Quantum’s Irvine operation came about with its 1998 acquisition of Irvine’s ATL Products Inc., a tape drive maker that spun off from what’s now Anaheim-based Iteris Inc. in a 1997 blockbuster stock offering.
The company wanted to centralize manufacturing operations in other areas as well, Cohen said.
The Costa Mesa plant is being combined in Colorado Springs with another from Englewood, Colo.
The lease on the Costa Mesa building expires in June, according to Cohen.
The Colorado Springs expansion is the second in three years, according to the Colorado Springs Gazette. Quantum came to the tech heavy area south of Denver when it bought a plant in 1994. It laid off 1,300 people a year later when it moved production to Asia, according to the paper.
Employment at the remaining operations grew to 1,700 workers before another shift of work to Asia in 2000 and 2001, bringing another 1,300 layoffs.
Quantum continues to buy companies. Last year, it paid $770 million for Redmond, Wash.-based Advanced Digital Information Corp.
